First of all, I’m not that computer savvy. Here’s the deal: I use Internet Explorer as my web browser. Very recently, a strange thing has started happening. If I double click on the icon that I put on my desktop, a timer shows up, then it goes away. At first I thought it wasn’t opening, but then I realized it was just opening really slow: it was taking about 3 to 5 minutes to open up Internet Explorer. If I single click on the icon, and select “Open” from the drop down menu, it opens up right away.
very strange… try right clicking the icon and choosing properties… see if there’s something amiss in the target line… or try deleting the icon and creating a new one on the desktop.
No, I can’t guess what’s going on. But if you wanted IE to open fast, just use OPEN as you are doing, its pretty simple & fast. At least until you install another version of IE, which might change things.
Whenever you open up Internet Explorer, you’re not just starting the program. You’re also telling it that once the program is started, there is a specific web page that you want to go to. My guess is that you’re going to two different pages, and the one from the icon is slower than the one on the menu. They might like the same but have subtle differences.
To find which page you are going to, you need to do a lot of right-clicking. Right-click on the icon, then left-click on Properties, and see where the Home Page is.
Do that for the Menu is trickier and hard to describe. Try it and good luck.
If the two end up the same, I give up. But if they are different, then change the icon one to be the same as the menu one.
Looking at my computer, I see the default action (when you double-click) is to “Open Homepage”. When you select “Open”, it just starts the browser, and doesn’t go anywhere.
Change your homepage to blank. (Tools->Internet Options from inside the browser). See if that fixes it.
If IE is opening slow, it could be a number of reasons. But the timer bit actually changes things a bit. It’s possible that another program is executing with IE or that IE is hosed. If it was a web site, it would load right up THEN do the timer bit not prior.
Some things to consider :
1.) before the problem started did you change anything on your system(ie, install new software, upgrade software, etc etc).
2.) Is it JUST IE doing this?
Basically with any type of computer problem, think of what change in the last week or 2. If nothing changed, it’s possible that a file went corrupt.
MS did something real nice with IE 5.5, they implemented a repair option. Here are two different ways to run it :
1.) Click Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove programs -> Look for Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x and Internet Tools -> Add/Remove -> Select Repair -> Hit OK -> Reboot when prompted
If for some reason it is not there, then do the following :
Click Start -> Run
Type in “rundll32 setupwbv.dll,IE5Maintenance” (sans quotes)
Hit Enter
Select Repair…you get the idea
If in both instinces the option is grayed out, then just re-install IE. You can download it from download.microsoft.com or you can do a search for IE5SETUP.EXE on your local computer. If you have more than one of them, go with the newest date version or the one in c:\program files\windows update